The first legislation I signed as President was the 1993 Family and
Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which allows workers to take up to twelve
weeks of unpaid leave to care for a seriously ill child, spouse or
parent, a newborn, newly adopted or newly placed child, or for their own
serious health problem, without fear of losing their jobs. This law was
an important step forward in helping America's working families balance
the competing demands of work and family. Since then, I am proud to say
that more than 35 million working Americans have taken leave for family
and medical reasons since 1993.

In 1996, the bipartisan Commission on Family and Medical Leave
issued a report assessing family and medical leave policies. The
Commission found that the FMLA was working well for both workers and
employers. Today, the U. S. Department of Labor released the results of
its new surveys, which updated the Commission's work. Once again, the
data show that the Family and Medical Leave Act remains a balanced
approach to meeting the needs of workers and employers. We know that
when needed most, covered and eligible workers were able to take this
benefit -- in fact, more than 15 million have done so since January
1999, the period covered by this survey.

FMLA has given millions of workers the ability to care for their
seriously ill child, spouse or parent, or stay home with their newborn
child, without worrying about whether their job will be there when they
return. Our work is not done, however. We must now build on the
success of FMLA by giving more workers the protections of the Act and
finding new ways to provide paid leave to those workers who need to take
off but cannot afford to do so.